Valentine's Day Minus
by Minerva Solo
Summary: Draco has an 'accident' in Potions, and what with Valentine's day on the horizon and an impatient girlfriend, he has to turn to someone with experience in both complex potions and rule breaking for help.
1. D minus 7

Valentine's Day Minus 

_A/N: Written for the D/Hr Valentine's Day Fic exchange, for 'Alejandra', under the criteria:_

_Rating(s) of the Fic: PG-13 - NC-17  
  
3-5 Things to Include in the Fic:  
1. Angst  
2. A happy-ish ending  
3. Snarky!Draco  
4. Lots of sexual tension  
  
What Not to Include in the Fic:  
1. A neat, tidy ending  
2. Declarations of love  
3. Non-con_

_This version has been edited, since the original contained NC-17 material. That version can be found here: _

_Warnings: D/Hr, angst, smut, ambiguous ending_

_Disclaimers: none of the characters involved belong to me, unless you count some of the Hogsmeade miscellany. I am making no money from this_

_Enjoy!_

D minus 7 

Hermione had her own spot in the library. So much so that one year Ron had labelled it as such, and was now banned from the library. Hermione smiled at the memory, tracing the letters carved into the old oak desk with one lazy finger. No one had managed to restore the desk to its former glory, and a secret part of her was pleased she be immortalised in this way. The not so secret part of her had had a go at Ron for despoiling school property, of course.

A pale hand slammed on to the table in front of her, making her jump. Pale, slender, manicured nails, soft skin and expensive rings.

"Hello, Malfoy," Hermione sighed.

Her diary thumped onto the desk in front of her as well, but as her hand shot out to grab it the diary was whisked away almost immediately. Her fingers brushed the rough cover for a split second. 

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "You have my attention," she said softly.

"You're not even going to ask how I got it?" Malfoy smirked, sliding into the seat opposite her. It had been Ron's seat, when he was still allowed in the library, and the thought of Malfoy there made Hermione's lip curl in disgust.

"Blackmail is despicable," she said bluntly. "I'd been expecting it of you for years."

Malfoy shrugged the slur away. "I need a favour," he said.

"A favour that you think you need to blackmail me for?" Hermione laughed softly. "What a way to make certain I wouldn't do it, though you could have offered me roses and I'd still have spat at you."

"Oh, keep talking to me that way, darling," Malfoy rolled his eyes. "The diary is to make sure you don't talk. Repeat what I'm going to tell you and I'll stand on the staff table at supper and read out the most delectable extracts from this scandalous piece of literature."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "What, that I spent days feeling guilty because I accidentally saw one of the answer on Harry's paper in the Charms quiz, and felt like I'd cheated, even though he'd got it wrong?"

Draco shrugged. "You're quite the little dullard," he acknowledged, "but I can forge what I need. Tell me, which would be more shameful: a long standing crush on Ginny or an illicit affair with Snape?"

"Are you going to ask me this favour?" Hermione sighed heavily.

Malfoy opened his mouth and shut it again. Hermione watched him curiously. He was definitely embarrassed about what he had to say. Well, it had to be something big, for him to come to her. He sat there, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish for a few seconds, glancing around the library and frowning at the desk. Eventually he leant in and started to whisper to Hermione out of the corner of his mouth.

"You know I'm with Pansy Parkinson," he began.

Hermione snorted, and Malfoy immediately shut up. "You look like a weasel," Hermione explained candidly, "but even you could do better than that pug-like girl."

"When did you get so bitchy?" Malfoy's eyebrows knitted.

"There are two people here I really don't like: you and her," Hermione explained sweetly. "It's so fitting you should end up together. Our children will probably loathe each other as well."

Malfoy flushed red, to Hermione's surprise. "There's no hope for that if you don't help me now," he said. "You're the second best at potions in this school."

"Second?"

"Well, naturally, I'm the first," he gave her a superior look.

"So why do you need my help?"

"Because you've got experience breaking into Snape's closet of doom, and I haven't."

"Closet of Doom?" Hermione giggled despite herself. Malfoy gave her a knowing look. "So what is it so desperate that you can't go to Snape?"

"The other day. Potions. Shrinking Solution. Robes," Malfoy managed in short stutters.

Hermione's eyes widened as the truth dawned. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

"Stop, or it'll be Hagrid you're secret crush is on," he said coldly.

"And it's Valentine's Day next week, isn't it?" Hermione spluttered. "Oh, _Malfoy_."

"Apparently engorgement charms will just get me into real trouble," he growled. "I can't find anything in this section of the library that can help. You're head girl. You go and get me the books I need, find the potion I want, bring me the ingredients and-"

"I'm sorry, I hadn't realised I was your personal slave," Hermione told him.

The diary dangled in front of her face for a split second. She made a half-hearted swipe for it and watched it disappear back into Malfoy's lap. _Well,_ she thought, amused at herself, _there's a lot more space for it there now_.

"Look, we've got one week. We're the best potion students in the school. Between the two of us we ought to be able to solve this," Malfoy said, a touch of desperation in his voice. "You're better at the rule-breaking thing than I am. I wouldn't know where to start. I'm an informer."

"A snitch," Hermione said absently.

"What's Quidditch got to do with this?" Malfoy frowned. Hermione shook her head. "Don't make me beg, Granger."

"You called it a favour," Hermione pointed out. "You'll owe me one."

"You think I don't know that?" Malfoy snapped. "You think I want to be beholden to _you_?"

"That's right, say my name like it's filth, that's really going to make me agree," Hermione said sarcastically.

Malfoy sighed. Hermione watched him as he forced his shoulder back, wiped the scowl carefully from his face, unclenched his fists and looked her levelly in the eye. Impressive.

"You're the only one who can help me. You'll have this to hold over my head. Is that enough?"

"No."

"What?" Draco's eyes widened. "Look, Granger, what do you want? Anything. Money, chocolate, clothes, jewellery, what?"

"A 'please' would be a nice start," Hermione sighed and sat back. "I'll tell you what I want, Malfoy. I want you to leave me alone after this. Leave me, and Harry, and Ron and Neville too, and Ginny, of course, and, well, most of the Gryffindors, I want you to leave us alone. No more jokes about Mudbloods or the boy who lived, or money, or purity, or anything."

"You don't think people will notice a complete personality change?"

"You don't think Pansy will notice a complete physical change?"

"She wouldn't know any better," Draco said without thinking.

Hermione laughed. Malfoy didn't even flinch this time. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of. It's a Muggle thing, sex before marriage."

"But being a teenaged boy..."

"But being such," Malfoy acknowledged with a wave of his hand. "Okay, desperate situations call for desperate measures. I can't comply completely, not all at once. Compromise?"

Hermione nodded tersely.

"I hate Potter. He hates me. He put my father in prison. You think of it as some schoolboy grudge, but it's personal. I can't leave myself open to attack from him. I'll avoid him, if you want, but if we meet I won't hold myself back any more than I have done."

"You vowed to kill him," Hermione pointed out coldly.

"And I meant it," Malfoy said in the same tone. "As I said, this is serious. Of course, I wouldn't hurt him here. It's bad enough with one Malfoy in prison. You don't have to worry about that for a long time to come."

"Oh great, you want me to make a pact with someone who's just vowed to kill my best friend 'one day'?" Hermione snorted incredulously. 

"Should the opportunity arise. Granger, you know me. I'm a law-abiding citizen. As I said, you're the rule-breaker." Malfoy sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Total honesty? I haven't got guts. Too squeamish. Father wanted me to follow in his footsteps and I couldn't even kill a house elf. Great death eater I'd make."

"You're too cowardly to be evil. I'm so very comforted. I'll definitely sleep easier for it," Hermione spat bitterly.

Draco looked amused. "You know you will, as well. Don't forget, I've read this thing," he waved the diary again. Hermione didn't even bother reach for it. "Look, I'll avoid him, okay? Best I can offer there. I can't stop hating him any more than you can me. As for Weasley, and the rest of that brood, fine, I'll lay off. It's been seven years. I'm running out of things to say."

"You ran out within the first week," Hermione pointed out. "Everything you've said since then was either too many kids or too little money. Generally both."

"True, but you'd be surprised how much you can get out of that."

"You know how little kids tell the same joke over and over, until their parents point out it's only funny the first time? You're parents never said that to you, did they?"

"If it was only funny the first time, why can I still get a laugh out of my house now?" Malfoy smirked.

"You want me to list the reasons?"

Malfoy sighed. "Fine, fine. Shall we keep this simple? Compromise: I avoid the Gryffindors as much as possible. I stop making jokes about your housemates I've made before. Should someone slip up, no force on earth will stop me from laughing, and even repeating the story. But nothing old."

Hermione opened her mouth and stopped. This really would be the best she could get out of Malfoy. Not only that, it was a good deal. She couldn't imagine anything that could happen in these last few months that could give him new fodder for jokes. And even if it weren't long, a brief respite would still be welcomed.

"Agreed."

Malfoy almost fell out of his chair.

"And should you break that promise, I will reveal _all_," Hermione smiled wickedly.

"Agreed," Malfoy nodded. "Shake on it?"

They shook on it.

History was made.

Night 

Hermione's head swam. She couldn't sleep, and she knew precisely why. Well, who. Seven years ago, would she have thought this could happen? Could a rat-faced boy do this to her?

Well, he wasn't quite so rat faced, not any more. He was beginning to look more like his mother, like there was a permanently bad smell under his nose. An aristocratic countenance. Still, turning his nose up at everything had helped his posture a bit, and while he was never going to be a basketball player, he was too big to be a jockey. Not that any sport other than Quidditch would appeal to him.

Hermione blinked firmly at the darkness. The scarlet patterns on the inside of her eyelids mirrored those on the drapes over the bed. Gryffindor. The lion. Loyal. Proud. Strong.

Of course, lions weren't really like that. They were scavengers, just as much as any fabled hyena, and the males so rarely hunted. Hermione wanted to pick the mane from the best above her head. Lioness. She could be proud of that.

Serpents were very Freudian.

Hermione decided she didn't like the inside of her head. In the morning she'd laugh at the symbolism, and maybe even share it with Malfoy to wind him up. The problem with all this secrecy and shame was the way he sat so close to her, the way he lowered his voice so it sounded so intimate and the way his breath brushed her cheek as he whispered in his ear. He wasn't even that attractive, not really, not in a modern way. Maybe the woman who had stitched that lion, centuries ago, would have seen past the outside to the wealth and status and loved him for it. 

Hermione sighed and shut up, pressing her eyelids with the heels of her palms. Back then it had made sense to marry someone like Draco. It was what girls like Hermione had done, being practical girls. But what did practical girls do these days, when it wasn't acceptable to marry for money only? They couldn't wait for love, they were too practical for that kind of feeling, and they knew physical attraction was fleeting.

Hermione stared into the darkness.

"Of course."

No wonder she was bothered. Pansy Parkinson had what she was scared she'd never have. Pansy loved. No matter what, Pansy would get married and have kids and probably be happy, as long as her husband didn't hit her. She wasn't bright enough to be unhappy.

"Too smart for your own good," Hermione muttered under her breath. "Jealous twit." 

She got up, found some scissors, and stood on the bed, unpicking that pale blond mane. And she lay down lonely and stared at the lioness.


	2. D minus 6

D minus 6 

"You were right, engorgement charms would just make it all so much worse," Hermione commented as Malfoy slipped surreptitiously into the seat next to her. She sat with one arm on the back of the chair, one elbow on the table, book in her lap. Malfoy found himself with a good view of the back of her head as she continued talking. "Please don't tell me you learnt that from experience, or we've got no chance of solving this by Valentine's Day. In fact, we'd be lucky to solve it by the end of the next millenium."

"Well thank god I know how to engage my brain and know to look before I leap," Malfoy muttered sardonically. "I checked all these books. You're supposed to be looking in the restricted area."

"I need a teacher's pass for that. Who am I supposed to convince to give me a pass for a book curing _this_ kind of magical malady?" Hermione shot him a sideways look, twisting in her seat.

"I gave that some thought," Malfoy said seriously. "Snape, firstly. I can't, because he'd guess, and this really isn't the kind of thing you want teachers involved in besides. He'd delay on purpose."

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh come on. Look at the guy. When do you suppose the last time he got any?" Malfoy scoffed. "Bitter, jealous men do not good research partners make."

"Why would he give anything to me?" Hermione asked. "You know he hates me."

"Yeah, but you're head girl."

"Yes, I'm head girl, not head mistress," Hermione pointed out. "Power over students only, and then not much."

"Make up an excuse."

"Who else did you have in mind?" Hermione sighed, changing tack.

"Madame Pomfrey. Tell her you're researching rare mystical maladies. She might even let slip some information herself."

"Again, why didn't you ask?"

"I did, but she said I'd had enough to know anything I needed to." Malfoy grimaced. "I can't help being such a delicate creature."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Anyone else?"

"McGonagall is practically falling over herself for you. I'm sure she'd give you anything you asked," Draco said with derision.

"Like Snape isn't over you?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"Tell her it is Auror research, or something. You want to do that, right?"

Hermione looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. Maybe. The boys want to but... it's not where I see myself going. I don't know," she sighed. "Why do we have to make these decisions now, anyway?"

Malfoy gave her an evaluating look. "I see you staying here," he said quietly. "Teaching. This place hasn't had a headmistress for centuries, you know, and she only because her late husband had been headmaster. You'd start in a subject like transfiguration and work your way up. McGonagall's slated for Headmistress after the old coot's gone, and you could easily follow her up."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Hermione said, surprised.

Malfoy leant in, chin almost on her shoulder. "Of course, officially," he half-whispered, "I'm totally horrified by the idea of someone who was not only mudblood friendly, but a mudblood herself, running this place. But only officially."

"You are a boy of many layers," Hermione observed dryly. "Like cake."

"Like cake?"

"Well, you're definitely not deep enough to deserve comparison with an onion," Hermione grinned. "You're stale cake."

"I'll remember that," Malfoy said, mouth twitching in a smile of his own. "Strange, strange girl." He thought for second. "I've made enough people cry to be an onion."

Hermione shook her head. "Too late," she said. "Would have been funny, but you left it too late."

"I know. Timing's off today," he shrugged. "So, cure me."

Hermione sighed. "We need that pass for the restricted section, unless we sneak in at night. And I know from experience that's not likely to work." She stared coolly at Draco. "I'm not risking my position as head girl for you, you know."

"Not asking you too," Draco said. He paused. "Well, I am. Tonight good for you?"

"No," Hermione said bluntly. "You want to go sneaking about at night, do it on your own."

"But I'd much rather commit illegal acts with you," Draco said.

Hermione turned and stared at him. Draco held her gaze calmly. Joke in poor taste, poor phrasing, or... Hermione didn't like the 'or'. 

"I thought you didn't like breaking rules?" she said, mustering calm.

"Why do you think I don't want to do it alone?" Draco smiled.

"If you don't then you'll be doing it alone on Valentine's night," Hermione said, proud of her wordplay.

"Very droll," Draco said coldly. "Can we please get back to the matter at hand?"

"I thought we were," Hermione sighed. "I'll do what I can to get legal access to the books we might need in the restricted section. If you want to risk it, you can try for illegal access. I can't risk getting caught, Malfoy. I was lucky to get this position with my record. I can't afford any more mistakes."

"No wonder Potter never even made prefect," Malfoy mused. "I'm surprised Weasley did." When Hermione shot him A Look he went on, "what with him having the same track record, and all." Hermione had to concede that. "Help me, Hermione Granger, you're my only hope."

Hermione blinked at the reference, not sure whether it was intended or not, but Draco kept talking before she could ask.

"I'm not a complete dunce when it comes to Muggle culture, you know." Ah, Hermione thought. Probably was a reference. Still, 'Star Wars'? Not really what she saw Malfoy indulging in. "I mean, compared to the previous generation, it's positively scandalous how much I know. I even learnt to drive, I'll have you know. Muggle cars operate on pretty much the same system as wizard cars, but they don't fly. Pity."

"Yes, pity," Hermione said wryly.

Draco picked up a book and began browsing it in a bored fashion. "Would you work faster if I paid you?" he asked nonchalantly.

"No," Hermione said simply.

"Only, Pansy's getting really tired of waiting. She doesn't see the point in waiting for Valentine's Day. And I'm not sure that, working at this rate, you'll even be finished by then." Draco studied his nails. "So, can we speed this up?"

"No," Hermione said, letting a little frustration leak into her tone.

"Only, I'm an eighteen year old virgin and I see the possibility of being an eighty year old virgin getting more and more likely."

"You're not the only one," Hermione growled under her breath.

"Oh?" Draco leant in, smiling shrewdly. "Trouble in paradise?"

"No such place," Hermione evaded him.

"Who is it? Potter or Weasley? Give me that, at least, Granger. Give me that and I'll even stop the scar cracks."

Hermione turned and looked at him. "You will stop them anyway, or your little predicament is going in the next Witch Weekly."

"I'm a good listener," Draco persisted. Hermione gave him an incredulous look. "No, really. How do you think I get hold of so much gossip?"

"You read trashy magazines and ill-informed newspapers," Hermione said bluntly.

"Well, yes," Draco admitted uncomfortably. "But you've got my curiosity piqued. What's the point in working together if we don't share a few heart-to-hearts?"

"You've been watching too many Christmas specials," Hermione said. Draco looked puzzled for a second, but his face cleared. "Besides, I loathe you for your personality, you hate me irrationally for my heritage, and I'm only helping you because you blackmailed me into it."

"Well, true." Draco sat back. "But still, I'm bored. It sounds entertaining. You're not getting any, and you want someone to give it to you."

Hermione thought for a moment. The look on her face scared Draco, slightly, but naturally he was too man to let it show. "Well, I _am_ only human," Hermione smiled sweetly. "Is the wizarding world so archaic it has yet to recognise the nature of female sexuality?"

"Eh?" Draco managed.

Hermione laughed. "Never mind," she said. "I'll go and ask now, just to see if I can get into the restricted section without a teacher's note. You... I don't know. Do something to help yourself. See if you can find anything else we can't try."

As she walked away Draco stared blindly at the book in front of him. That had been surreal. Granger wasn't sexually attracted to books. Very odd. Unless that was why she hadn't told him who she had her eye on, because she was. Oooh, what if it was Dumbledore?

"Are you okay?" a Ravenclaw asked. "You look like you're about to be sick."

Draco managed a weak smile. "Bad mental picture," he explained.

"You look really ill."

"It was that kind of picture."

"Oh dear."

"Indeed."

"Parents having sex?"

Draco swallowed and shot the scared third year a very evil look. "No, but it is now. Thank you _so_ much for that."

Night 

The library was not a fun place to be at night. The floor creaked of its own accord and the books fluttered on the shelves. The shelves seemed to have moved from their daytime positions, so despite still being within sight of the door he felt hopelessly lost. Every step held the risk of finding some abandoned pencil or quill or stack of parchment and going flying. For someone as naturally jumpy as Draco it was a recipe for an early heart attack.

On the other hand, with the noise in this place his careful sneaking shouldn't have been detected. Well, not until the alarms started blaring.

It was all Potter's fault, Draco decided as he took refuge in a closet just outside. He'd snuck into the restricted section so often they'd had to install a gate, and to cross that gate without permission set alarms off.

No, wait, that was just Peeves.

"Bugger off, before I call the Bloody Baron," Draco hissed at the grinning spook. "I'm head prefect of Slytherin. He'll come, you know."

"What's the head prefect of Slytherin doing sneaking into the library, aye?" Peeves cackled. "Some sneaky Slytherin scheming afoot?"

"Yes," Draco said bluntly. "Go away."

"I haven't seen you doing much sneaky Slytherin sneaking, not around here," Peeves said, almost conversationally.

"Yeah, well, I'm new to it." Draco snarled. "I don't know all the rules yet."

"There are rules to breaking rules?" Peeves looked baffled.

"For example, I don't know whether it's acceptable to blast irritating ghosts into eternity to keep them from blowing my cover," Draco smiled cruelly, producing his wand from one voluminous sleeve. "Let's see, we did this one in Defence Against the Dark Arts, I'm sure. _Vultu Vestae_..."

And Peeves was gone. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, Draco made his way back into the library. In the darkness the Restricted Section loomed ominous and forbidding.

"I do this in the name of love," Draco said out loud. "Isn't that it? When you do something in the name of love things are supposed to go your way. You overcome any obstacle."

The darkness still scared him anyway. He cursed his parents for spoiling him so much as a young child, swallowed his fear, and approached the books as cautiously as before. Hopping over the gate he sidled up to the quietest shelf and plucked a book from it at random. He opened it and lost a large portion of his sleeve to it before he managed to slam it shut again and force it back amongst its brethren. Draco sighed heavily. He'd be here 'til dawn, but he was here in the name of love.

Well, lovemaking. He was far too practical to fall in love, especially with a girl as ugly and stupid as Pansy. Love was for girls who read too many books and stared at too many pictures of overly effeminate young men, and boys like Potter who thought a muscle designed to pump blood had helped his mother defend him from Voldemort. Love was a word cooked up by card manufactures and failing seasonal economies. There was sex, there was respect, there were maternal instincts, there was mutual benefit, but there was no love.

Why was he here again?


	3. D Minus 5

D minus 5 

"Saint John's Wort."

"That's a cure for depression," Hermione said vaguely. "Scaring all the anti-depressant makers."

"Well, it's also part of the cure to shrinking solutions," Draco sat on the table in front of her, pushing her book away.

"You look like the cat who got the cream," Hermione observed.

"What can I say, it's a rule-breaking high. I could be the next bad boy of Hogwarts." He grinned ferally. "I could swap velvet and silk for leather and lace, have some obscure tattoo in a scandalous place, and take up smoking. Evil is sexy."

"Evil is not sexy. Voldemort's not sexy," Hermione pointed out.

Draco shrugged this off. "Everyone loves a bad boy. Evil has wicked eyes and great hair."

"I thought Good had great hair?"

"No, Good has great teeth," Draco dismissed her. "Great teeth and sensible shoes. See, you're Good. You're parents are dentists, for heavens sake. You never had much of a chance, poor thing. But me? I'm bad to the bone. I've got a father in prison, _great_ hair and enough money to buy Manhattan. Evil is Sexy, and Sex is me."

"Do you know where Manhattan is?" Hermione cocked an eyebrow.

"Egypt, right?"

"Yes, Malfoy," Hermione rolled her eyes. "Besides, 'Sex is me'?"

"By Valentine's day." Malfoy dropped a heavy, plain book in front of her, grinning proudly. Hermione had a vague urge to pat him on the head and give him a Scooby Snack. Well, kind of. In a 'not really' kind of way. It was a Saturday, and she suspected Draco had dressed in the dark to keep from waking others in his dormitory. With Draco's non-uniform wardrobe, Hermione had observed, it wasn't hard to put on any combination and come up looking good. It was all green, silver or black anyway. His eyes were burning with the kind of intensity that only came with a sleepless night and he leant in with a sense of desired intimacy rather than privacy. His mouth was slightly open, lips wet and tongue flicking out to moisten them further.

"Good dog," Hermione patted him on the head.

"You know, I can see right down your top," Draco retaliated. He tilted his head to one side and laughed as Hermione reflexively pressed a hand to her chest to hide her cleavage. She looked down. Damn. Turtleneck jumper. Smarmy bastard.

Hermione sighed theatrically and reached for the book. "The Joy of Magical Sex - a picture book," she read. Brown eyes met grey. "You're kidding me?"

"No," Draco shook his head. "There's a page on enlarging, uh, 'aspects'. There's a paragraph about excuses, and it mentions shrinking solutions, and it mentions what to do should it actually have happened."

"See, you never needed my help," Hermione said calmly. "Can I have my diary back?"

"No. I'm looking for the bit saying you and Dumbledore are involved in a passionate affair, but because he's so old he can't get it up and that's why you're so moody." Draco watched Hermione's eyes. "Yeah, that was how I felt," he said smugly. "And then a Ravenclaw decided it was a good time to make me imagine my parents having sex...yes, that's _precisely_ how I felt," he smirked, watching her. "I swear this school's standards are slipping. We've got people like Longbottom, who can't tell a wand from a broomstick, and now even the Ravenclaws are thick as two short planks. It's the halfbloods, I tell you. All this mixed breeding."

"Funny, but I thought stupidity was associated with inbreeding?" Hermione smirked. "You know, like your family? How nearly every single pureblood happens to be related to you?"

"Oh shut up. It's good blood," Draco sniffed. "I'm talented."

"You're spoilt. Did you _read_ this?" Hermione stared at the book. "I don't even want to think what some of these stains are."

"It's been checked out a hell of a lot, too. Not by any students, though."

They shared a shudder.

"You want page three hundred and fifty two," Draco said. "The one with the two wizards, a witch, a centaur and a unicorn. The potion instructions are just below the illustration."

Hermione used her transfiguration homework to cover the frightening picture while she read through the instructions. "This seems pretty basic, and we ought to be able to get in over and done with in less than an hour. Even preparation time's short. Just overnight."

"Good good."

"I should probably copy this out. A book this popular is sure to be wanted around Valentine's Day, and we don't want anyone to know it's missing." As Hermione copied the luridly descriptive instructions in an incongruously neat and restrained handwriting, she paused to ask another question. "It's the closest Hogsmeade Weekend to Valentine's Day, and yet you're here in the library with me. Where's Pansy?"

"I told her I was doing research for next Friday night. Showed her the book."

"That was probably a mistake. If anyone notices it's gone, they'll know it was you."

"Yes, because they're going to announce over breakfast that an illustrated sex guide has gone missing from the restricted section, and would whichever horny teenager took give it back because there are some very lonely teachers who need the pictures this coming Friday."

They both laughed.

"It's funny," Hermione observed as she finished copying the instructions with a slight flourish, "at Muggle schools they have sex education, but not a word has been whispered here. I mean, there must be magical methods of contraception, but I know nothing."

"Most teens in the wizarding world stick to condoms," Draco shrugged. "Easier to hide than any medallion or magical mark, doesn't smell like most of the potions and ointments, no loud chanting to kill the mood, and available pretty much everywhere. Plus, so much easier to get rid of the evidence if your parents walk in while you're still in some post-coital haze."

"You know, that was more than I ever wanted to know," Hermione said politely. "No wonder they don't bother with sex education."

Draco laughed. "At a place like this all the staff are too old fashioned to conceive of the idea that we might all be doing it like bunnies."

"We're not all at it like rabbits," Hermione pointed out.

"Well, not in _Gryffindor_," Draco smirked lazily. Hermione fought her amusement. She hadn't expected to win, but she suddenly received reinforcements from an unexpected area.

"Hermione?"

"Ron," she swallowed.

"Malfoy, what are you doing here?" his attention shifted abruptly. And then back again, to the more trusted source of information, "he's not bothering you, is he?"

Hermione stared at her friend. "It's okay, Ron," she managed.

"What's he doing here?" Ron demanded angrily.

"What are you doing here?" Draco countered before Hermione could reply. "I thought you were banned from the library."

"It's been lifted," Ron replied coldly. 

"Woo. Hoo." Draco stared up at him. "And Yip. Pee. De. Doo. Dah.."

"Oh stop it, both of you," Hermione sighed.

"Why are you defending him?" Ron leaped on her statement.

"I'm not," Hermione said bluntly. "Really, Ron, why would I?"

"Hey, right here," Draco said snippily.

"Why is he here?" Ron asked again. 

"Homework," Draco said smarmily. "It's what those of us who aren't planning to make careers out of woodcarving do in the library."

"My uncle's a woodcarver," Hermione said suddenly. "Does all the fairs. I've got a stool he made at home."

The boys both turned to frown at her. "Well, that shut you both up," Hermione said superiorly. "Look, Ron, I'd rather Draco wasn't here either, but he asked for my help and I wasn't quick enough to find a good reason not to."

"Isn't absolute gut-rotting hate a good reason?" Ron asked, looking honestly astounded.

"I hate her too," Draco pointed out.

"What does he want? He's not hurting you, or anything? I mean, no blackmail?" Ron persisted.

"What do you think I've got hiding in my bottom drawer, Ron?" Hermione asked, forcing levity into her voice. "Look, you go and find Harry and I'll come join you boys down on the Quidditch pitch, okay? I know that's why you came to find me. Just give me a minute to get rid of the amazing bouncing ferret."

Ron looked sulky, but he reluctantly agreed. He'd pushed it already, suggesting Hermione had secrets that could be held over her, he didn't want to imply he didn't trust her either. He didn't, but pointing it out probably wasn't a wise course of action.

"It was your bedside table, actually," Draco murmured when he was gone.

"What?" Hermione asked distractedly.

"Where you hid your blackmail material," Draco smirked.

"So, same time again tomorrow?" Hermione asked awkwardly.

"I guess so."

"We can plan who's going to get what. You've got more access to Snape's cupboard than I-"

"Oh no," Draco shook his head vehemently. "Not likely. No way. And other negative expressions."

"You have much better access," Hermione said. No, pleaded. Damn.

"We'll discuss this tomorrow," Draco said. It would give him time to come up with a better excuse than 'shan't'. "Don't you have to run and meet Potty and Weasel?"

"Really. Old. Joke."

"So is 'amazing bouncing ferret'," Draco pointed out dryly. "And you're the one who's going to have to come up with an excuse."

"You mean a lie. You're making me lie to my friends," Hermione said unhappily.

"Yes," Draco said simply.

Night 

Liars wouldn't look you in the eye, and they gestured a lot, and one side of their face tended to move more than the other. Hermione wasn't a good liar. She knew how to spot a liar, but for some reason she'd never managed to put that knowledge into any use relating to her own fibbing. Hell, she even _blushed_.

She hated herself for wanting to be a better liar. She shouldn't even be lying at all. It was all Draco fault, corrupting her. He was making her lie to her friends. She'd always held people who lied to their friends in contempt. When she took Harry's broom to McGonagall, she'd told them the truth when asked, even though it meant Ron and Harry cut her out.

And they'd befriended her again. Hermione bit her lip. Perhaps the truth would have been better. Ron hadn't even been able to look at her during dinner. They both _knew_ she had lied. And now they probably thought something far worse was going on between her and Draco than actually was. But if she'd told them the truth Draco would have read that bit from her diary about Ron that night to everyone, or that bit about her dream about Harry, or even the thing Ginny had confided to her. Oh, there was little to implicate Hermione, but she couldn't bring her friends into this. 

And that upset her, for some reason. Not the idea that she might hurt her friends, but that she had nothing to hurt herself with. Was she really that good? "Good has great teeth," Draco had said, "you never really had much of a chance." And now she thought about it, she hadn't. She was pragmatic. It was _sensible_ not to break rules. And she was smart. Smart got on well with teachers. Well, only if Smart was eager to learn, which she had been. She knew some Smart was too smart, and got bored of learning. 

And now she was head girl. This last year she hadn't done _anything_ that could blemish her record. No invisibility cloak escapades, or potion experiments, or even any use made of the Room of Requirement. It would be nice to just have a little bit of rule breaking to her name in there, something minor. Maybe not even rule breaking, just something that wasn't strictly approved of. Like Ginny's secret. Just something scandalous.

Victor Krum, that had been slightly scandalous. At least, it had turned up in Witch Weekly. Just a quick relationship, a fling, which would make people look at her and go, 'oh, she's human too.'

Because some days she didn't feel it.


	4. D minus 4

D minus 4 

They met early by some kind of mutual consent told silently during the night. Hermione looked tired. Draco looked rumpled. The library looked like the last shelter from Armageddon.

"Why are so many people here?" Draco asked miserably.

"Snape's set tests in every single class," Hermione told him. "Come on, star Potions student, surely even you knew that?"

Draco paled. "What on?" he swallowed. "For us?"

"Shrinking solutions," Hermione laughed. "Otherwise I'd be on strike today to revise."

Draco managed a weak grin. "So, ingredients," he said shakily.

"What's wrong with you?" Hermione asked.

"Why don't we go down to Hogsmeade, see how much we can get there?" Draco suggested. "There'll be less people too."

"Will you answer me then?" Hermione asked softly.

"What's with _you_ today?" Draco snapped. "All friendly. Potter and Weasley ditched you? Because if you're trying to make the best of a bad job you've got no chance with me." A pause. "I mean I wouldn't be your friend if you paid me."

"I got that," Hermione reassured him dryly. "Though the simpler interpretation's also true."

They made their way to Hogsmeade separately, another unspoken decision. Hermione wondered when they'd developed that ability. There was something suspiciously similar in them. Something that didn't like breaking rules and erred towards the path of least resistance, though they'd still ended up on very different paths. They didn't care if other people hated them for their views. And they probably had some negative qualities in common too, Hermione admitted glumly to herself.

Of course, that didn't stop her from hating him.

The supply shop in Hogsmeade was dirty and cramped. It didn't get a lot of business from the students, and most of the business in Hogsmeade came from the students. Still, the kind of enlarging potion they needed was often used by hard up housewives who wanted as small a vegetable plot as possible but large vegetables afterwards. There had to be a careful balance though, the shopkeeper droned, or the vegetables would end up watery and tasteless. They had to shrink them first, you see, with a shrinking solution, and then, when they were fully-grown, they had to enlarge them again, with an enlargement potion, except-

"Do you have any less common spotted gillyweed?" Draco interrupted.

The shopkeeper replied in the negative, because, you see, it was rare and there wasn't much call for it, except for growing meat - Hermione giggled - and that was most inadvisable, you see, because if they shrank it first the animal wouldn't grow properly, and if they didn't shrink it, you know, it would explode when enlarged. Very careful balance, do you see?

"Yes, we see," Draco snapped. He shoved a handful of weeds and powders under the shopkeeper's nose. "We want these." They were withdrawn, and a handful of Galleons replaced them. "For these. Comprendez vous?"

"-" the shopkeeper was shocked into silence.

And then they were out of the shop and in an almost deserted Hogsmeade. Half of the shops were shut, since it was Sunday anyway, but Draco spotted an upmarket café tucked in a corner and dragged Hermione in unthinkingly.

"I'm hungry," Draco explained abruptly. "And I don't want you asking me stupid questions back at the school, so you can damn well get them all out of your system here."

Hermione sat opposite him with a self-satisfied silence. Draco stared at the menu like it had personally offended him. Hermione's confident air dropped when he wasn't looking at her. Ron and Harry would be in the great hall right now, wondering where she was. If they saw her, they'd think their suspicions confirmed. She glanced at the side of the menu Draco wasn't looking at.

"What's the chocolate cake like?" she asked softly.

"You want the cheesecake," Draco told her.

"I'm in more of a chocolate mood," Hermione said firmly.

A waitress appeared, some species not quite human but close enough to pass in a poor light. Pretty, Hermione scowled internally.

"Two cheesecakes," Draco said, "and two teas."

Before Hermione could object the girl was gone, leaving a faint puff of smoke.

"What is she?" she resigned herself to asking. Well, yelling wasn't going to help, was it, and maybe the cheesecake would be worth it. 

Draco shrugged. "Got a bit of harpy in her, maybe," he said unconcernedly. "They clean up nicely with clothes on."

"I thought harpies were half bird," Hermione said.

"I think she's half harpy. The human half," Draco said. "Who cares? She's not human. She's bringing us cake. Sums it up."

Hermione frowned and wondered when she'd given up objecting to little prejudiced comments like that. "Are you going to tell me what's got you all edgy today?"

Draco opened and closed his mouth a few times. Then, "Your fucking boyfriend told my fucking girlfriend that we've been fucking seen together."

"Can I have that without the sexual intercourse?" Hermione asked sweetly.

"Man Weasley speakee to Girl Pansy," Draco said, waggling his head back and forth.

Oh, she hadn't given up objecting to the racism, Hermione realised happily as he palm connected with his cheek.

She opened her mouth to give details of why she'd hit him, but he'd rocked back on his chair and the lack of surprise on his face suggested that he'd been pushing for that reaction anyway. Hermione felt slightly used, but the hot throbbing of her palm was immensely satisfying. It felt good to hit Draco every now and then. Normal.

"I can point to that mark," Draco said, "and prove to Pansy nothing's going on."

"Is that why you're a bastard, to reassure your girlfriend?" Hermione asked coldly.

Draco gave her a long look. "I really wanted you to hit me," he said calmly. "Things are getting weird. I needed to do something to remind me why we hate each other. I had to. You feel it to, right?"

Hermione considered for a second. "Yes," she finally admitted. "Of course, having tea and cake with you here isn't helping the weird feeling."

"And it's not going to get better when this is over," Draco moaned. "You put all these restrictions on me. I won't even be able to have a go at you any more."

"I didn't say me," Hermione pointed out. "Just the others."

"Brilliant!" Draco's face cleared. "Mudblood! I feel better already." He frowned. "No, you definitely included yourself, I remember."

"True," Hermione said, "but I'm finding this just as strange, remember. If this keeps up I might even feel sorry for you."

"You think that's bad? I'm beginning to _respect _you!" Draco wailed. Hermione blinked at the vehemence of the sentiment before realising Draco was winding her up. Mostly.

Their cheesecake appeared, and they ate, for the most part, in silence. Hermione spoke only once, to admit that she probably did like it better than she would have the chocolate cake. The tea was full of cream and sugar, which Hermione drank with a secret indulgent thrill. Cream. Sugar. The enemies of Good, because they were not only unhealthy, but destroyed the perfect teeth.

She wished she could stop thinking about that conversation. Too much time thinking she was Good and Draco was Bad and if she wanted to be less Good then he would be the person to help her. She smiled at the half empty mug. Well, she wasn't willing to be that Bad yet, so there was hope for her yet.

But then the food was gone and the bill had yet to appear and it was awkward again. Hermione flashed Draco a small smile.

"I'll see you tomorrow to discuss what else we'll need," she told him, "lunch time in the library as usual."

Draco pulled himself back to the here and now from wherever he'd been. Hermione allowed herself to dwell on her curiosity about that for a second as she stood up. He frowned as she tucked her chair neatly under the table.

"Thank you for lunch," she said, smile broadening wickedly.

He glowered at her retreating back, one hand still pressed to his heated cheek, then return his gaze to the empty plate in front of him. As Hermione passed the window she glanced in again to see him biting his lip. He was frowning, Hermione thought at first, but as she climbed back up the hill to Hogwarts she began to wonder if it wasn't more like pain. And she knew from experience that when Draco hurt, he made sure to spread it around.

Night 

Pansy was being difficult. Pansy had always been difficult. Still, she'd calmed a bit at the swollen cheek. Draco had forgotten how hard Hermione could hit. Even lying in bed it still throbbed, hot and stinging and keeping him awake. The symbolic serpent embroidered over his head made him want to spit at his misfortunes.

His feelings kept ganging up on him and trying to confuse him. Unfortunate things tended to happen when he let his feelings get the better of him, he'd learnt. Plans tended to go awry when he didn't think them through properly and relied on things working themselves out. Doing things for himself almost always led to disaster. That, he decided, was how he knew he was meant to be at the top of the pecking order. He existed to come up with ideas, then make other people make the plans, then make yet more people carry them out.

He hadn't really thought everything through this time, he admitted to himself. There was a lot he hadn't foreseen. There was that time restriction which had him really worried. He couldn't fob Pansy off any more after Valentine's. That was his last chance.

Pansy was getting impatient. He'd foreseen that, but he hadn't foreseen how much he'd be repulsed by it. She just seemed so desperate. She wasn't that pretty, Draco knew, but then, he wasn't exactly going to win any awards himself, if he was brutally honest. If he wanted sex, it had to be a Slytherin. He was pretty much universally reviled by the other houses. He didn't care, their opinions didn't matter, but wouldn't life be sweeter if the sorting hat threw a few stunners into Slytherin. Anyway, Pansy wasn't bad, and she came from a good family, and she understood the meaning of expensive anything. 

But she was desperate and needy and on an intellectual level with Longbottom. And being told every day that he ought be having sex right now this instance appealed to his stubborn side. On the other hand, he was very much a teenaged boy and sex pretty much consumed his mind when nothing was distracting him.

And then there was this deeply irritating problem with Hermione. In that she was attractive. And unobtainable. He'd never been deprived of anything.

_So what if I'm spoilt?_ he though fiercely. _I can't have her, therefore I want her. So when I get her, I will cease to want her. Thus, when I have my dick back, I'll obtain her._

It did occur to him that resolving to seduce his worst enemy was perhaps not the brightest decision of the day. And Hermione wouldn't take kindly to the idea either, he was sure. This was going to be one of his badly thought out plans again, like killing Potter. He'd been lucky not to get expelled, but the evidence hadn't been completely conclusive. He'd always have supporters. So perhaps no sleeping with Hermione. She was a mudblood and a Gryffindor and so tantalisingly unavailable it made him horny. So what if he hated her? This wasn't about that. This was about being denied something.

Some days he got tired of being, as Hermione had put it, a 'snitch'. It made him popular among his fellow Slytherins, because naturally any rule breaking Gryffindor or Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff deserved precisely what was coming to them, but being loathed by everyone who wasn't Slytherin could be a little claustrophobic some days. Of course the other houses were Inferior, and one did not mix with ones Inferiors. And they were Bad in ways no Slytherin could ever be, because the rules didn't apply if you were Superior. To explain it to anyone outside of Slytherin would be ludicrous, but it wasn't arrogance. Slytherins were ambitious. They got the top jobs. In a few years he, and most of his class, would be in superior positions to their schoolmates. Might as well get into the mindset now, right?

There was a certain attractive notoriety you could earn by breaking a few rules. He'd boasted to Hermione that he was Bad. He wasn't, but he thought about it rather more than he probably ought to. He had a fantasy that he'd never commit to paper. He was a wizard in the Muggle world. He wore Muggle clothes to disguise his identity, and knew how to imitate them precisely. He rode a motorbike bewitched for flying, like that felon Sirius Black, and wore clothes than made women faint and men reach for their wands in jealousy. He had to keep his magical powers a secret, until he encountered some witch working for the other side. There would be lust and passion and no possibility of romance, due to irrevocably different personal beliefs, and sometimes she died, but for a while he had something dangerous and secret and daring and he was a hero whose tale would ever be told. Not like Potter's.

Draco sighed and rolled over. Normally at this point the witch would have a face, and, more importantly, the body of a veela, but he had to steer his thoughts away from that. He wanted to touch himself but was it so incredibly upsetting. He ached to touch. He ached to be touched. God, Pansy, why did you have to keep pushing like this? Why did you have to be so desperate and lustful and so good at grinding?

Draco kicked off the covers and sat up in bed. He was tired. He had to be, to have thought like that about Granger. He didn't want to be _that_ infamous. Maybe he'd just cheat on Pansy at a later date. Or dump her and find someone else for Valentine's. Someone attractive, and smart, and less needy. Maybe a Ravenclaw. No, that would be too smart. Draco firmly believed that you should never date an equal. They were too demanding.

He stared at his feet, pale beneath the grey silk of his pyjamas. It really sucked right now to be Draco Malfoy. He needed a cold shower.


	5. D minus 3

D Minus 3 

They'd found a table round a corner in the shadows at the back. The library wasn't a naturally private place. It took effort to find somewhere you could really hide, especially from Madam Pince. Hermione sniffed and sneezed.

"We've found a part of the library as yet unexplored by mouse or man," Draco said in soft wonder.

Hermione brushed thick dust off of the backs of some of the books for a closer look, and sneezed again. The dust resettled where it had started. She frowned at the volumes.

"It's Plato," she said. "What's Plato doing here?"

Draco shrugged. Ancient philosophers and wizards weren't his thing. Like pretty much everyone else in the school, he'd never managed to pay enough attention in History of Magic to give a damn.

Hermione sighed and turned back to him. "Do you have everything we got yesterday?" she asked.

"No, my bag is full of books," Draco snapped sarcastically. Sleep deprivation tended to affect him rather strongly.

Hermione gave him a level stare. He groaned and tipped the packages out onto the seamy table. Something that looked like a purple turnip, four hundred grams of powdered forget-me-not, a fluffy yellow cucumber, two rabbit's feet and a swollen tuber.

It didn't exactly smell nice.

Hermione studied her carefully copied instructions. The turnip thing was Dragons Chutney and the cucumber shaped fluff was described as Strongbody Fruit. The swollen tuber was identified as just that. Hermione suspected it was just a potato under a more interesting name. The rabbit's feet made her cringe.

"The dragons chutney needs to be cubed and soaked in the juice of the tuber," Hermione scanned the parchment. "We want to have the strongbody fruit and cut the hairs until they're the same length as those on the rabbit's feet. And, oh, you can do this bit, we need to pull the nails out of those feet."

"I can do that bit?" Draco raised an eyebrow. "Not likely. I'll do the strongbody fruit." he reached down and grabbed it. Hermione flinched. "What?" he dropped it hurriedly.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Wait for instructions, okay?" she said. "For all you know those hairs could be deadly poisonous." 

"Are they?" Draco asked cautiously.

"No, lucky for you," she said coolly. "Though if you tried the same with the forget-me-not powder you'd have blue skin for months. And you're definitely dong the rabbit's feet."

"Why?" he asked petulantly.

"I don't like rabbits," Hermione said bluntly.

"They're _feet_," Draco said coldly. "I don't want to rip nails out of anything. I'm not good with blood."

"They're _old_," Hermione snapped irritably. "There won't be any blood in them."

"So why won't you do it?" Draco whined.

Hermione looked away. "I had a rabbit once," she said.

"You say that like it's the end of the story," Draco prompted scornfully.

"It died."

"And..."

"It ate its babies. We had it put down."

Draco picked up the rabbit's claws and Hermione wordlessly handed him a pair of pliers.

They worked in silence, Hermione juicing the tuber and chopping the Dragons Chutney while Draco moved onto shaving the Strongbody Fruit. They had stacked several piles of books acting as a screen on the table, and kept their business compact. Still, every footstep walking past the column of shelves made two pairs of shoulders tense and the passer-by found him or herself watched by cold pairs of eyes over dusty volumes.

They couldn't have looked more suspicious if they tried, Harry felt, watching them through a chink between shelved books. Ron sat next to him and fumed.

"Are they talking?"

"I can't hear anything."

"What's going on?"

"I'm not sure. Walk past again."

"Yes, because I'm not bloody obvious. You go. Your hair doesn't stand out like a firefly at a moths ball."

"We'll get Neville to go."

Hermione frowned at the distant whispering, but it was the kind of background noise you came to expect in the library. Still, it caught her attention, and that worried her. 

"I had a pet snake, once," Draco said awkwardly. "Big green thing."

"You don't even know what species, do you?" Hermione said scathingly. She wanted to discourage this conversation now.

"Green mamba. Illegal, deadly, terrifying to a nine-year-old boy. I lied and told father it had bitten one of the house elves so he'd get rid of it. He let it loose in the cellar instead, to chase them. I went down once, a few years ago, and suddenly it was just _there_. I thought it was that snake Voldemort's rumoured to have."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked, drawn in.

"Ran. But this was just after father was arrested, so I was man of the house. I had to do something, no matter how much I didn't want to. So I snuck back down later, with a huge torch. It was gone. I made the house elves keep watch down there. When they started disappearing I knew it was still around."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked again.

"I searched the catacombs, trying to work out where it was getting in and out, with Crabbe and Goyle. We ran out of sacking to plug the last couple of gaps, so I left Crabbe sitting in one and Goyle in another. The snake was in there, I was certain, because it had just started to snow outside and any cold blooded creature would go seeking for warmer climes." Draco sighed, and grimaced. "It wasn't, though. I searched for hours. House elves everywhere."

"That's an abuse of their rights," Hermione grumbled.

"They don't have rights," Draco frowned blankly.

"Exactly!"

"Tell you what, since I don't understand what your point is I'm going to ignore the fact you're trying to make it," Draco said breezily. Hermione's face clouded over. "Anyway, we couldn't find the snake. I was getting tired and scared and tired of being scared. Crabbe and Goyle had wandered off. So I gave up, basically. I wandered back up stairs and, later, basically, I went to bed."

"It was in your bed, wasn't it?" Hermione said.

"By the time I was done it was in my bed, in my cupboard, in my chandelier... I was possibly a bit overzealous," Draco grimaced. 

Hermione sighed. Draco sat with his arms folded across his chest, leaning back in his chair with his chin against his chest so he could look straight at her. He was smiling slightly.

"So fiercely proud of slaughtering some poor defenceless animal," Hermione snorted.

"Did you not hear the green mamba bit? Deadliest snake?" Draco's eyebrows disappeared into his hair and he unfolded his arms to gesture sharply.

"It was just looking for somewhere warm," Hermione insisted.

"And something to eat!" Draco snarled.

Neville stumbled back to Ron and Harry looking slightly traumatised.

"Draco sleeps with snakes," he announced.

"You what?" Ron said incredulously.

"That's what they're talking about," Neville insisted shakily. "I'm not going back there."

"What did Hermione say?" Harry asked firmly, sitting Neville down and pressing a bar of chocolate into his hands.

"That he shouldn't have done it," Neville breathed. "What's going on?" he asked plaintively.

"No eating in the library!" Madam Pince appeared behind Ron's shoulder, making him spin around and stumble backwards while Harry jumped and Neville leaped out of his chair. "All of you, out! Now!"

Hermione turned in her chair towards the commotion. She squinted between the shelves.

"Oh god," she breathed, "Harry and Ron were spying on us."

The three boys were marched passed the table where Hermione and Draco sat. Draco craned his neck to see over their shield of books.

"Looks like they're roped Longbottom in too." He paused, "Hey, can I still take the piss out of him? That name would be begging for it, even if he were in Slytherin. And as for magic..." he scoffed.

"I wonder what Pansy will say if we get this wrong, and your dick swells up and pops?"

"Point taken."

"Good."

They stared at the ingredients arrayed before them.

"So what did that shopkeeper say we needed?" Draco asked.

"Lesser Common Spotted Gillyweed," Hermione said. "And you asked for it."

"I asked for what?"

"Lesser Common Spotted Gillyweed. At the shop. And if I have to say 'Lesser Common Spotted Gillyweed' again I think I might faint from asphyxiation."

Draco grinned. "LCSG, then?"

"I'll forget that," Hermione told him. "Its just Gillyweed, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Draco admitted. "Where do we get it from?"

"Snape's cupboard," Hermione said simply. "Perhaps we ought to ask Dobby. He managed to get some for Harry during the Triwizard Tournament, and he's much less likely to be spotted than either of us."

Draco's mouth twisted. "A house elf? Worse, a _manumitted_ house elf? Granger, Hermione, come on. You can't trust those things to do a job even if you stand over them with a whip. We have to do this ourselves."

Hermione fumed.

"Fine," she snapped. "You can do it."

"Oh no, I found the book," Draco said hurriedly. "You can have the honour of raiding Snape's stores."

"We'll do it together," Hermione said firmly to prevent further arguments. "Tonight. How easy is it for you to get out of your dorm?"

"Too easy," Draco snorted. "Where shall we meet?"

"Outside the dungeon," Hermione decided. "Midnight."

"What about Filch?"

"I'll distract him, while you make certain Snape isn't going to walk in on us."

"How am I meant to do that?" Draco sat back incredulously.

Hermione smiled, and Draco wondered if that was the kind of look he got when coming up with plans like the dress up as a dementor one. He hoped whatever wickedness Hermione had planned would go a little better than that.

"Plant the book in his office," Hermione said calmly.

"What book?" Draco frowned.

"_The_ book."

"Oh, that book."

"Yes."

"In his office."

"Yes."

"For him to read."

"_Yes_."

"Because that's not going to traumatise me for life," Draco swallowed. "You know, I'm going to need years of therapy just to discuss the events of this week."

"You and me both," Hermione assured him. "Tonight, remember."

"How could I forget?" Draco moaned. "I can't go to the lavatory without a sharp reminder."

"Did not want that mental picture," Hermione told him as she gathered her books.

"If I have to live with it, so do you," Draco said. "I'll take this little lot, shall I?"

"I ought to," Hermione said. "I've got my own room, so there's less chance of anyone finding them. I guess we ought to make the potion and apply it in there as well. For the privacy."

"People are going to reach so many conclusions," Draco sighed. "Except they're not, because there's really only one you can jump to."

"We can do it in your dorm room, if you like," Hermione smiled sweetly. "With Crabbe and Goyle and Blaise and god knows who else looking on."

"Here, I'll help you pack this stuff in your bag," Draco grinned brightly. 

Night 

"Ouch!"

"Shh!"

"I take it that's you."

"And you?"

"Yes, I think I'm here too."

"Very funny, Malfoy."

"Lumos"

Hermione and Draco stared at each other in the darkness. For some reason, Hermione was wearing her nightgown.

"Turn that off!"

"What's wrong with you?" Draco hissed and Hermione wrapped one hand around the glowing tip of her wand. For some reason, her other was still tucked into her dressing gown.

"We'll be seen!"

"And if we have no light we'll be heard!"

They glowered at each other in the faint red light that seeped between Hermione's fingers. Draco yanked his wand back and they both had to shield themselves from what now seemed like a very bright light.

"Put it out," Hermione growled. "I've got an alternative."

Draco pouted, but did as she suggested. Hermione pulled her hand from her pocket, and in it she held a small blue flame.

"I heard you could do that," Draco said with grudging admiration. "Didn't know it was a cold flame though."

"I altered the spell slightly. Cold, waterproof and portable," Hermione smirked.

"You should sell that," Draco whistled approvingly.

"Maybe I will. Now, so come on, we have some late night thievery to do."

"I'm right behind you," Draco smiled.

"Oh no you're not. You're the Slytherin prefect, you go first," Hermione grabbed him and pushed him bodily in front of her, keeping her grip on the tops of his arms to guide him down the steps.

"What am I going to do if Snape turns up?" Draco gasped.

"I thought you'd distracted him," Hermione pointed out.

"So why do I have to go first then?"

"Because even I could take you in a fight, Malfoy. If I say you're going first, you're going first."

Draco pulled himself out of her grasp and turned to face her, one step down and forced to look up. It was, he realised, not the most threatening position for her. Still, he had to make do. He breathed deeply, squared his shoulders and folded his arms.

"Don't jump to conclusions," he sneered, "in case you miss your landing. Just because I'm short and slim does not mean I'm weak."

"You're practically the same build as I am," Hermione pointed out.

"I do more exercise than you," Draco returned.

"You're a seeker. Know that physique that gives you? Great thighs. I tremble in dread of your _thighs_." Hermione sniffed.

"I ride, and swim, and I hunt," Draco said. "You ought to fear my thighs, and the rest of me. And try saying that with a straight face," he grinned, defeated.

Hermione laughed. "We're talking about your thighs outside of Snape's dungeons, just prior to stealing supplies so you can sleep with your girlfriend. I really wish I'd bet the odds against least likely things to happen to me, ever. I'd be richer than you by now."

"Gryffindor have a gambling circuit?" Draco asked, back to whispering again, as they made there way between rows of stained tables and abandoned cauldrons.

"Fred and George," Hermione explained simply. "They tried to convince everyone to think of the least likely thing that might happen to them, and they gave odds on it. I refused to play along, more's the pity."

"You never play along, so you?" Draco snorted. "Little miss goody-two-shoes."

"Yes, because you're _such_ a rebel," Hermione hissed dryly.

Draco grimaced and sighed. They stared at the forbidding cupboard. "Do you think this will be the most illegal thing I'll ever do?" he asked.

"Probably," Hermione shrugged. She frowned. "God, that was blasé."

"Potter's a bad influence on you, though I'm sure once everyone goes their separate ways you'll be utterly white bread again," Draco reassured her.

"Like I've been this year? It's good to be good, I know. It makes life easier, makes people like you, and, I don't know, it's _safe_."

"You're sick of it, aren't you?" Draco grinned. 

"It's not breaking rules," Hermione said, "that interests me. It's just, I don't know, being _noticed_ for it."

"A little notoriety never goes astray," Draco said solemnly.

"How would you know?" Hermione asked scornfully. "The only way you earn notoriety is by being a prat, which just means people hate you. People like me."

"Had to remind yourself there, didn't you?" Draco said softly as she moved away. She didn't reply. She hadn't heard, he decided. She wouldn't let a comment like that go by otherwise.

The cupboard stubbornly refused to open at a simple alohormora, but Draco produced a strange key that, when inserted, made the door swing open immediately.

"What's that?" Hermione hissed.

"Thief's Exit, I think it was called," Draco said, turning the twisted metal over in the palm of his hand. "Got it at Borgin's place, in Knockturn Alley. Opens any door locked from the other side."

Hermione blinked. "It's a cupboard," she pointed out. "How could you lock it from the inside?"

"Well, what have we here?" a deep, slimy voice echoed from the dark depths of the closet. "I thought better of you, Malfoy."

Two pairs of eyes widened. One pair then narrowed in anger, and directed its gaze at the second pair, which narrowed in suspicion.

"Peeves, I know that's you," Draco said firmly. "Snape's nowhere around here."

"Ah-aa-ow-oh," Peeves whined. "You couldn't play along for just a bit longer?"

"No," Draco snapped. "We're busy. Clear off."

"Or what?" Peeves sneered.

"Or I'll petrify you," Hermione told him. "And if you go to Filch he won't thank you."

"We'll see about that!" Peeves snapped triumphantly. He ghosted away through the war, singing nasally, "Granger and Malfoy, sitting in a labor't'ry, K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

"Idiot!" Draco slapped Hermione across the back of the head, making her stumble into the gloom of the cupboard. "What did you say that for?"

"Because Filch really won't thank him," Hermione smirked at him, face cold and unpleasant in the flickering blue light.

"What's Filch doing?" Draco asked slowly.

Hermione shook her head. "I thought you said you'd had enough of disturbing images."

"He's not with Snape, is he?" Draco swallowed.

Hermione froze. "You," she said eventually, "need to see a psychiatrist."

"I," Draco replied in the same carefully measured tones, "need a memory charm."

In silent consent, they turned to the contents of the cupboard. Hermione found the weed they wanted first, cold and damp are carefully wrapped in layers of cotton. She unwrapped it carefully and sighed.

"How are we going to get this back to my room?" she asked. "We need to leave the wrapping behind, or Snape will know the minute he comes in here that it's gone." She chewed her lip, rubbing the rubbery leaf of the spotted plant between two fingers. "It'll dry out unless wrapped up carefully. It mentioned in the Herbology text book that any kind of Gillyweed needs to be carefully wrapped in damp cotton to keep it from drying out."

Draco frowned. "It won't be damp," he warned vaguely, and turned around. 

Hermione shot him a sideways look, as he hitched up his robes. When he turned back, he had a pair of socks in his hand. Hermione reached out to take the balled up socks, but withdrew her hand again. 

"Oh, don't be such a wuss," Draco snapped, a grin taking the edge out of his brusqueness.  

But then, crime of crimes, Hermione started to giggle. 

Draco snatched the gillyweed and bundled it up inside the socks. Draco thrust the package back into her hands. "Run it under the tap when you get back to your room," he told her abruptly. "You can keep them."

Hermione was left blinking at a pair of socks as Draco swept past her. He strode through the dungeon at a measured pace, but she heard his footsteps speed up as they echoed through around the stone staircase. Hermione ducked out of the cupboard and kicked it shut with her foot before sprinting after Draco.

She caught up with him at the top of the stairs, but he ignored her. She watched him walk down the corridor towards the dungeon that housed Slytherin. She took two steps after him, but caught sight of her reflection in a dark window. Time to go back to bed.


	6. D minus 2

D Minus 2 

Today was the day of preparation. So when Draco didn't turn up in the library, Hermione was furious. She wasn't doing this out of the goodness of her heart. No matter how Good she was.

She'd seen him in lessons, that was the most infuriating thing. Seen him sitting at the Slytherin table during lunch. Seen him commanding his Quidditch team. Harry had confessed to her a few weeks back that Slytherin were frighteningly good these days. They'd never been bad, exactly, but they're tactics had changed. Just the sly kind of tactics, Ron had scowled, that Malfoy was likely to employ. 

Hermione had welcomed both Harry and Draco's promotions to team captains. Their hatred of each other frequently played itself out on the pitch, leaving them both too exhausted for more than dull verbal barbs afterwards. Gryffindor versus Slytherin games were always dirty. Draco planned them that way, Hermione knew, but he was good at it. It was subtle and it was, more importantly, all within the rules. Harry struggled. Harry didn't have the kind of devious mind that could wrap itself around those plots. Hermione had always admired that about him.

She glanced at her bag and glanced around the library. She'd waited half an hour already, more, since she'd arrived early. Her original plan had been to use the Room of Requirement (not telling Draco what it was, of course) or, as a last resort, the Shrieking Shack, though that would mean telling him about the secret passages. Hermione wanted to keep as many of Hogwarts secrets out of the slimy Slytherin's grasp as possible. Knowing him better these days, she wasn't sure quite what he'd do with Hogwarts many secrets, though it was easily conceivable that he could use them to spy on Gryffindors and report to teachers whenever they did something marginally unlawful. 

It surprised her sometimes how careful he was. He only broke rules if he was certain he'd get away with it, or, in a pinch, have someone else to blame it on. He sucked up to the teachers. He told tales on any one he didn't like, but covered up for everyone he did. It also surprised her that he wasn't made head boy, but she guessed Dumbledore had thrown the spanner into those works. They'd probably have hexed each other into next week if they'd been forced to share the duties of head boy and girl. They'd come close just sharing the responsibility of this week. 

Hermione glowered at her name, still immortalised in ancient wood. Draco had let her down. This was all about him, and he wasn't even here. She could do this alone, she was confident, but that wasn't the point. She wasn't getting anything out of this. It wasn't as though he was _her_ boyfriend. No, he was her enemy, and he was using her. And for the first time, she felt it.

But then, no Draco meant she could play potions in her own room. God, she loved having Her Own Room.

Her room was at the top of Gryffindor's tower, with an amazing view over Hogwarts. There were two single rooms in each house's 'area'. Sometimes she wondered how she'd managed to earn head girl, with her chequered past. Ernie Macmillan was her match, in his room tucked away by the Herbology sheds, with a near perfect record and consistent grades and good relations with most of their year. She hadn't seen his room, and he hadn't seen hers, though she had taken some time to explore the Gryffindor's Head Boy Room. It looked depressingly like her own. Bed, desk, wardrobe, chest of drawers, sink, window.

Hermione gathered up her thoughts and her things and trekked back to her room, offering smiles to a few familiar faces in the common room, but getting none in return. It had to be the Draco thing, she sighed. She wondered what she could do or say to make them understand what was going on. Perhaps if she simply admitted she was being blackmailed into silence they'd accept that. Perhaps not.

She spent a lot more time in her room than she ever had in the dormitory. As an only child she'd grown up with her own room, and with no sibling to drag her out of it periodically to play with them she'd got used to spending her free time there. It was comfortable to build a room around you, know that the books go in this order and that drawer hold skirts while this one has blouses, the soft toy you got when you were born sits there and the ornament you can't stand but have to keep goes here, and the rug your grandmother made you rumples up on that side because you sit on it and the edge gets shoved up against the open wardrobe. 

She'd had Ron and Harry up there, Ginny too, and they'd all taken one look and smiled. Ron had voiced the mutual thought: "It's just so 'Hermione' you wondered how she's survived all these years without it." She'd added extra bookshelves and filled all of them. Her desk was buried under parchments and timetables and notes. Ornaments were scattered across other free spaces, all gifts from friends and family over the years. None were particularly nice, but point and ask and Hermione could tell you who and where and when and why and even what, if you weren't quite certain. There were books in the bed as well, which had sent Ginny into a fit of giggles, and Crookshanks had a basket next to the window which didn't shut properly, which had Ron complaining about the draught until Crookshanks obligingly blocked it. Hermione was certain that cat was more than feline.

Hermione settled herself in the centre of the rag rug her grandmother had sent when she heard that Hermione made Head Girl. On the floor in front of her she set up the collapsible cauldron that she was certain Percy would outlaw in seconds. Still, it had worked so far, and it was just Malfoy.

The Dragons Chutney had been sitting in the Tuber juice since yesterday, tucked at the bottom of her underwear drawer. She retrieved the forget-me-not powder and, with a cringe, the rabbit's claws. She eventually found her pestle and mortar in Ron and Harry's dormitory, and picked up two of her textbooks at the same time. Resettling herself, she arranged what she had around her and made a mental note of where everything else would remain until she needed it. Grinding the claws into powder was a nice mindless occupation.

She'd hurt Draco's feelings last night. It hadn't even occurred to her that that was possible. She'd slapped him and he'd barely batted an eyelid. That was what he expected from her. Right?

Hermione groaned and ground. Wasn't this precisely what she didn't want to think about? Grind. Concentrate on the fact her arm was beginning to ache like hell.

Her stomach ached as well, and not in the ill kind of way. 

She pushed the guilt away and glowered at the very finely powdered nails. With a heavy sigh she added the dust to the forget-me-not powder. She recovered the chutney mix from her drawer and sought the strongbody fruit hairs in her wardrobe. She put the hairs under the cauldron and gingerly poked them into a mound with her wand before muttering '_incendio_'.

It smelt terrible, but it kept burning. Hermione drained the chutney mix over the cauldron and let the dark liquid simmer. She mashed the remains with the powder until it all turned a pleasant kind of dusky blue, like the sky during a summer evening. She frowned at her two mixtures in indecision. One had to be added to the other, but did it matter which way around? 

Hermione reached into her bag to fish for the instructions, but somewhere between beginning and ending the action her motivation gave out.

Hermione knelt on the rug, one hand in her bag and the other in her lap, staring out of the window. She was perfectly still, looking outwards but focused inwards. She could only see the sky from where she sat, so low. It was a hazing grey, not quite cloudy, not quite clear. The sun looked twice its normal size but half its brightness. That was how she felt. Translucent, like a jug of lemonade, glowing like a dying glow-worm.

Something had died inside, she knew. She wasn't sure what, and she wasn't sure when, but it had died and she had to get it out of her before it poisoned her.

Night 

Draco sat on his bed with his head pressed against his knees, arms around his shins and back curled like a bow. No one had spoken to him for seven hours now. He'd had to sit among the first years at dinner, and even they had frozen him out. He'd managed to get an entire table to himself at peak time in the library, long after Hermione had retreated to her own room to study. He didn't want to see her.

The notoriety wasn't all it cracked up to be, especially when he hadn't done anything wrong. If one was going to be famous for one's misdeeds, one ought at least have had the pleasure of committing them.

Pansy was a bitch.

The day after tomorrow was Valentine's Day, and he was not only not going to get any sex, but he was going to be single. For Valentine's, and for the rest of his life.

Some people acted like Valentine's wasn't a big deal. No one sent cards, not really, and most guys who were dating told their girlfriends that they refused to celebrate it on a moral basis. After all, why devote one day to doing what you ought to do every day? Pansy didn't fall for that one. Probably because Draco hadn't exactly paid the best of attention to her at any time.

Valentine's was for Muggles with too much money and a fetish for stuffed bears carrying satin hearts. No self respecting wizard should put themselves through that. Look at Lockheart.

Draco rubbed his eyes. He was tired. He hadn't had a lot of sleep recently.  Running around on errands to research magical penis enlargement and getting ingredients tended to take some hours out of your beauty sleep. But, Draco considered, that was hardly why he was so tired now. He simply hadn't slept. 

Masturbating usually helped him sleep. Used to. Right now it was an impossibility. _That_ was frustrating.

Nerves, those had kept him awake, even before the Potions accident. Pansy was a demanding girlfriend. If he didn't get it perfect first time she'd let him know about it. She'd let all of Slytherin know about it. Draco had heard a rumour that the girls kept a chart, comparing each guy on things like length and time and who came first. Draco could see himself on the bottom of that list, labelled: "Crap. Should have stayed a virgin." Girls seemed to think guys didn't get nerves. Maybe most didn't. After all, it couldn't be that different from masturbation, right? As long as you got off it was all okay, right? As long as you weren't thinking, at all, right?

He should have found someone less demanding. A younger Slytherin girl. One who didn't know he was a bastard. One who was a virgin herself. One who just wanted to tell her friends that she'd done it with a _prefect_.

Of course, there was no chance of that happening now.

What else had kept him awake? Hermione had. Thoughts of being a rebel had. Dreams of infamy and reputation and admiring looks had. After all, even Potter hadn't managed to get into Granger's knickers. Even Weasley hadn't got further than a grope in the dark. And she a Gryffindor, she who had slapped him, she a proud mudblood. Yes, that ought to have given him a little credibility. Well, not the mudblood bit, but that couldn't really be helped. It wasn't though he was thinking about a relationship here, and god knows they wouldn't breed.

And, even worse, he'd known she was tempted. He'd seen in her eyes. Her hatred had lost its edge, and if you can throw that much passion into dislike a bit of pressure on one side will flip the coin and suddenly it's lust. Not lust in the 'he's so hot I want to throw him down in the library and bonk his brains out' way, but in an 'I hate him so much I'm going to screw him to death' way. Draco understood that. When Hermione slapped him and spoke like he was dirt, it flared up. He wanted to show her he wasn't dirt. Not because he had anything to prove, like he did with Pansy, and that was the beauty of it. You had to respect someone to hate them that viciously. He didn't need to worry about earning or losing that respect.

Draco took a long, shuddering breath. These were bad thoughts when your dick was half the length of your little finger. He wanted to go and take a cold shower, but he could feel the rest of the dorm room guarding him darkly. To leave the room would be suicide.

He conjured up Pansy's spiteful face, screwed up like a bulldog with a mouthful of lemon. He tried to imagine her sucking him off, and pulling that face. His libido took three steps back in the face of that image and fled.

Still, sleep was a long time coming.


	7. D minus 1

D Minus 1 

"You can forget it," Draco announced, dropping Hermione's diary with a loud thump in front of her. "It doesn't matter any more."

"What do you mean?" Hermione frowned.

"It's over with Pansy. It's over full stop."

"Don't be so melodramatic," Hermione scolded him. "So maybe you won't get laid for Valentine's. There are plenty of other girls in the school."

"No, it's over for me. I have no chance with any woman who might possibly ever have held anything resembling an interest," Draco insisted, eyes glazed.

"What happened?" Hermione sighed tiredly, but genuinely curious.

"The entire school thinks we're an item."

Hermione blinked. "They've all gone mad," she said with conviction.

"Potter and Weasley have been going around asking people if they know why we've been going around together. That Hailey Abbot girl-"

"Hannah," Hermione corrected absently.

"-saw us in Hogsmeade in the café together. Crabbe saw me sneak out of the dorm to go and get the ingredients." Draco panted.

"Evidence is mounting up, I guess," Hermione sighed.

"I'm not caving to peer pressure," Draco snarled. "You hear that, Hogwarts!" he yelled. "I don't care what you think! I'm not shagging Hermione Granger!"

Hermione dropped her head to the desk and wrapped her arms around it. She could still feel the stares.

Draco threw himself into the chair opposite. "Help me," he said. "Slap me."

"Don't worry," Hermione said, voice muffled, "I'm sure your vehement denial will have them all convinced."

"'The Lady doth protest too much', you mean?" Draco said. "Slap me."

"I don't want to," Hermione bit out.

"Since when? You hate me. I'm arrogant and prejudiced and drop dead gorgeous. Slap me!"

"It won't help," Hermione said coldly.

"You're upset!" Draco observed suddenly. "It's not_ your_ sex life that's been ruined, you know. You'd have to have one for that."

"I'd slap you if it wouldn't make you happy," Hermione mumbled.

"What for?" Draco whined. "It's _my_ life that's ruined."

"Harry and Ron weren't speaking to me today. Now I know why." Hermione lifted her head and looked at him tiredly. "The knowledge is not comforting."

"Ah," Draco said suddenly. "I see what you mean. I guess Crabbe and Goyle aren't talking to me. Hard to tell, really."

"You're being glib," Hermione told him. "This is all your fault, you know that. I'm being shut out by pretty much everyone one I know for a crime I never committed. It's your fault and it's not fair."

"Not fair because you're hated for something you didn't do, right?" Draco smiled grimly. "And the worst part of it is that you didn't do it. I mean, we should at least get the satisfaction of deserving this animosity." He raised an eyebrow. "If my life is ruined for sleeping with you, I'll be damned if I'm going to go through it a virgin."

"If you're coming on to me, don't. I'm not in the mood," Hermione said bluntly.

"Don't flatter yourself," Draco snapped. "I'm not exactly in the mood myself. My life has been ruined." He waved a hand vaguely. "And I guess yours has too, so at least we can sympathise with each other."

"And we've still got five months until the end of the year," Hermione pointed out. If she was being sent to Coventry for hanging out with Draco Malfoy, she might as well hang out with him. It was better than the loneliness she'd known in that first year, friendless. Oh, ironic. These periods of friendlessness would cap her Hogwarts career really quite symmetrically.

This time it was Draco's head that dropped to the table. "Five months until I can emigrate to Australia."

Hermione reached across the table and tapped the back of his hand. Draco held it for a second, but Hermione pulled away and he looked up blearily.

"Let's do the potion anyway," she said softly. "You'll probably feel better when you're normally proportioned. You're being incredibly melodramatic. And you keep repeating yourself."

"It's my right," Draco sniffed. He reached out and grabbed her hand again. Hermione frowned at him. "I said I don't care what they think," he said.

"So you're... what?" Hermione looked baffled.

Draco shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'm holding your hand. I want to." He let go. "And now I don't want to." He made an attempt to grab it again, but Hermione pulled away and folded her hands in her lap. "And now I want to, but you don't. Such is life."

"I'm beginning to think those old jokes about the location of men's brains are true. You never were exactly bright, but now you're just weird," Hermione observed wryly.

"This is why the rumours prove my worst suspicions of our fellows students," Draco said. "We hate each other. Sex, sure, that's imaginable, but a relationship? What are they _on_?"

"Sex?" Hermione's eyebrows shot up.

  
Draco shook his head. "Nah. At least, not any of your friends. Some of the girls I know might have had their brains bonked out. It happens to the rich and faithless. You get bored and rebellious."

"I _meant_ sex between us," Hermione sighed. "In a more incredulous tone than that one."

"Oh, sure," Draco shrugged, grinning slightly at Hermione's self-depreciating little comment. "There's tension," he flicked his hand between them, back and forth. "I mean, neither of us are exactly the sort of people to do something that impulsive, but then, if we were to be that impulsive, it would have to be with each other because no one else would understand the significance of it."

Hermione stared at him. Eventually she nodded. "Yes," she said softly. "That makes sense." And it did. She smiled slightly. "But we're not impulsive people," she added firmly.

"No," Draco agreed. "Pity we can't convince them that."

"So, tonight?"

"I really can't see the point," Draco shrugged dolefully.

Hermione shook her head, still smiling. "Aren't the Quidditch showers communal?"

Draco froze. "Yes. Yes, they are. Yes... So, tonight?"

"I see no reason not to. Sooner we get this out of the way the sooner we can avoid each other, except when we're slinging insults."

"We're still going to do that? Only, it was part of the deal that we didn't."

"I think we ought to. Though say a word against Harry or Ron or anyone and I'll be over you like a ton of bricks." Hermione wagged her finger in front of Draco's face.

"Despite the fact they're not talking to you," Draco frowned. "I don't understand you sometimes. They're being bastards. They're judging you on a handful of rumours and a bit of circumstantial evidence. Have they even asked what's going on?"

Hermione rubbed her temples. "No, but that doesn't make them bad friends," she insisted. "Has anyone asked you why you sought me out?"

"No, but I already knew they were fair-weather friends," Draco shrugged. "It's my reputation I'm worried about. Reputation is the only thing to outlive you, and I'm not sure this is how I wanted to be immortalised."

"Am I really that bad?" Hermione snapped.

"You're a mudblood and a swot and head girl. It doesn't matter that you're an alright person," Draco shrugged. "The world is full of alright people. I don't care for alright people."

"If you were a Muggle," Hermione said thoughtfully, "you'd be the kind to always go to the exclusive parties and mix with the sensational people." He paused. "You'd probably own one of those celebrity magazines, though it would deal with actual scandals and stories, not spots and styling. You'd know the really rich people."

"I do know the really rich people," Draco pointed out. "And I like the party idea. I own a very large mansion. I could hold some really interesting parties. And writing's a suitable occupation for the rich and bored."

"And you're a scandal yourself."

"I'm going to fix that," Draco declared. "You will fix me, we will have a huge row, in public, and everyone will accept that it was just temporary madness."

"People would be more accepting of the truth."

"No. Way."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Honestly. What do you think people will say?"

"They will say there never was a potions accident," he said firmly. "Which there most definitely was," he added.

Hermione's mouth twitched, and Draco's expression soured. "So we stage a break up of a relationship that never happened?"

"Unless you're planning to be impulsive tonight," Draco flashed her a mirthlessly toothy grin. He climbed to his feet. "Here, midnight?"

"Uh, no," Hermione shook her head furiously, bushy hair puffing out. "Outside the Gryffindor Dormitory. I don't want to move all of the equipment."

"Okay," Draco shrugged. "So, tonight."

"Tonight," Hermione echoed by way of goodbye.

It had been a long time since she was impulsive. The temptation would have tortured an angel, and Hermione had long since acknowledged that she was merely human. The idea throbbed low inside her, making her shift on her chair. It wasn't an idea that could remain as such. No one who knew her would understand it, because it went so completely against her nature. 

Hermione's breath hitched in her throat. She knew, then, that she was going to be 'impulsive' tonight. It would just require a bit of forward planning, that was all.

Night 

Later, Hermione would wonder what on earth had made her take the risks she had that night. Sneaking Draco through the common room? Up the girl's stairs? That had taken a rope. And past door after door of Gryffindor?

The sickly nervousness made her tremble imperceptibly as she invited Draco in. She didn't even bother pretend it was just about 'fixing' him. If nothing else, she'd probably end up whacking him off. The idea excited her. It didn't matter that it was someone she loathed, it would still be something she had done. 

Draco remembered giggles. Even the idle fantasy he'd refrained from indulging in balked at the memory of those soft titters. Still, there was always hope, right? And yet he was surprised at first when Hermione didn't bother with any light other than that coming through the window. He rationalised it. She didn't want anyone to wonder why a light was on in her room this late. She didn't want to see what she was doing. Despite the low level flirtation of earlier, he'd seen that suppressed smile. She still found all this amusing. 

Hermione looked around the room. "Sit on the rug," she said eventually. Her grandmother would never know.

Draco looked at her for a moment. "Why can't I do this myself?" he asked plaintively.

In the darkness, he didn't see Hermione flinch. "It's says maiden. After this, you're going to be very male, hopefully."

"Yeah." Draco lifted his robe and pushed down heavy woollen underwear. Hermione smiled at the old-fashioned element of his clothes, but she wasn't going to laugh again. He sat with his legs apart and leant back.

He looked vulnerable.

Hermione scooped out blue paste onto her fingers. It was slightly gritty, and made her fingers throb. She hoped they weren't going to grow. Draco watched her, eyes narrowed. Goosebumps were beginning to appear on his bare legs, and Hermione wished Crookshanks was there to block the gap in the window.

She knelt between his legs, feeling overdressed. It wasn't funny, now she looked. She'd worried that it would be, but it looked so out of proportion that she felt more sick. She didn't have much paste on her fingers, but the shrunken member was quickly lost from sight.

She glanced up and realised the Draco had his eyes shut. "How... how does it feel?" she swallowed.

"Cold," he said. "I don't want to think about it."

"I could put some music on, or something," Hermione suggested helpless. "I managed to get a magical wireless in Hogsmeade for half a galleon."

Draco opened one eye. "What kind of sound do you get out of that?" he asked disparagingly.

"It varies," Hermione admitted, "but for what it cost it's pretty good."

"I'm sure," he rolled his eyes. "Uh, this is beginning to sting. Is it meant to do that?"

Hermione shrugged. "How should I know?" Looking down, she liberally applied more of the strange paste. Where it came in contact with his skin, she noticed, the warmth made that slight grit melt away. It felt strange. Slightly slick, but not oily. She rubbed a sample of paste between her fingers, but couldn't get the same effect. A little more paste and she returned to her ministrations, concentrating more on the feel this time, trying to work out what was going on. 

Draco coughed politely. Hermione stared at what she was doing.

Wow, this stuff worked fast.

Slowly, she raised her head. It didn't take as much courage as she thought it would to meet Draco's eyes. They narrowed slightly, and then relaxed again. She wondered what he was thinking.

"I'm being impulsive," Hermione breathed.

"Feel free to continue," Draco swallowed.

Hermione felt a blush rise in her cheeks but she looked down again. His breath was coming in short sharp pants and she watched his head fall back. This was so surreal, in the dark of the room. His free hand trailed up her body and plucked at her blouse, trying to undo buttons he couldn't even find.

Hermione withdrew her hand and she heard him stop breathing. She took his hand in both of hers and stared at it for a moment, as if she'd forgotten what she'd meant to do. Carefully, though, she guided it down. Draco's head was up again, watching her closely. Hermione tugged on her skirt, and Draco let his hand be guided up it.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly, lips twitching. Hermione smiled back. She let herself be guided forwards, over his open legs. She bent forwards and he let himself fall back. Then she paused, hovering. Her mouth opened, but Draco refused to let her spoil this with questions. The hand that had held him upright before now reached inside his robes and Hermione knew that he'd planned to be impulsive as well.

They didn't come together, like in Hermione's secret books. He groaned like someone had stepped on his stomach. It was decidedly unsexy. Afterwards, the whole thing seemed quite ludicrous. Not just the sounds, but oh, people were right to make fun of sex on smutty postcards and ribald radio shows. It was messy and noisy and afterwards you felt a bit odd. Hermione wondered when that would wear off.

She giggled as she pulled away from the exhausted boy lying on her floor. She stood up and straightened her skirt, still on the verge of pleasant hysteria. He was all the way down there, and all messed up, and here she looked all neat and like she had before and her legs were giving way but that was okay because she'd just lost her virginity to someone she wasn't sure she even found that attractive.

She dropped to her knees next to him and peeled the used condom off his limp dick, tossing it into a bin before collapsing next to him. He reached out and ruffled her hair.

"Thanks," Draco said around a thick tongue.

"Same," Hermione smiled. "Only, you have to go now, okay?"

"Can't move," Draco moaned.

Hermione poked him in the ribs.

"I'll move," he groaned. "Evil bitch."

"Yep," Hermione sighed in satisfaction. "Happy Valentine's Day, Malfoy."

"Back at you, Granger." He climbed to his feet and pulled his drawers back up as he shuffled towards the door. He glanced back only once, to see her pulling herself through the curtains onto her bed, disappearing from sight. He sighed, and left.


	8. V Day

V Day 

The next morning on the way to breakfast, the thing that preyed on Hermione's mind was the fact she'd never actually kissed him.

"Hermione?" a familiar voice called. She slowed to let Ron catch up, and, shortly after and rather more breathlessly, Harry.

"I thought you weren't talking to me?" she asked coolly.

"Uh, about that." Ron ran a hand through recently washed hair. "It occurred to us that, well, we probably ought to ask you if you were doing anything with Malfoy before we judged you for it, you know?"

"So?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. Ron looked blank. "Ask," she said.

"Are you in a relationship with Malfoy?" Harry asked calmly.

Hermione looked down the corridor towards the dining hall. Pansy Parkinson was just entering. She glanced back and shot Hermione a look of pure evil.

"No," Hermione said quietly. "I could never enter a relationship with Draco Malfoy."

Harry nodded happily, and Ron grabbed her arm a little over enthusiastically. She smiled at him, looping her arm around his, and offering her other arm to Harry. They entered the dining hall arm in arm.

On the other side, isolated among first years again, Draco Malfoy watched them solemnly. He hadn't heard a word they'd said, but he could guess that something had been, since they were all so chummy again. He closed his eyes for a moment, gathered his strength, and climbed to his feet.

"Well, well, well," he drawled as he approached the Gryffindor table. "The troublesome trio are together again."

"Hello, Malfoy," Hermione sighed.

"And just in time for Valentine's Day. Isn't that _sweet_?" He hovered behind Harry, who was sitting opposite Hermione. "All too young and innocent to understand the true meaning of it all."

"Says the boy who was dumped only yesterday," Ron pointed out snidely. "And all over a rumour."

"Just keep believing that," Malfoy smirked.

"What's your explanation for why you and Hermione spent so much time together last week?" Harry asked, hitting the one question to make both squirm.

Draco's eyes lit up. "I was tutoring her," he said smugly. "In potions." Hermione rolled her eyes, though Draco wasn't sure if it was for his benefit or her friends'. 

"You poor thing," he leant over, leaning on the back of Harry's chair. "All you've got are friends. What's Valentine's Day minus the love?"

"The same as any other day," Hermione said smoothly.


End file.
